Nine Inch Nails Go Deep at Ascend

Anticipation had been high for Nine Inch Nails’ first Nashville concert in five years since it was announced back in May, and that anticipation only intensified as Trent Reznor & Co. made their way around the country in recent weeks. On NIN's first tour stop in Phoenix, the industrial-rock innovators busted out 1992’s genre-defining Broken EP in its entirety, which includes songs not played in more than two decades. Days later, at Red Rocks near Denver, they dropped 1997’s “The Perfect Drug,” from the soundtrack to David Lynch’s Lost Highway, which they'd never performed live before.

Not knowing what exactly we’d hear Saturday — but knowing it’d be killer — had The Spin feeling giddy as we made our way into Ascend Amphitheater. Long before NIN even hit the stage, the night was already starting to take on a show-of-the-year vibe. With the temperature settling at a cool 70 for hip-hop/chillwave experimentalist Tobacco’s opening set, it was the most comfortable we’d felt at an outdoor concert in ages — so needed, after this punishing summer. Also needed: a night of catharsis (and mirth) after an emotionally draining week, even by 2018 standards.

Reznor has always had a Midas touch when it comes to picking opening bands. Last time through, at Bridgestone in 2013, we got Canadian post-rock giants Godspeed You! Black Emperor. For this one: Scottish greats The Jesus and Mary Chain — who, 28 years ago, took a fledgling NIN out on the tour supporting their ’89 LP Automatic. As best we can tell, JAMC hasn’t been back to Nashville since their February 1990 gig (on the Automatic Tour) at Cannery Ballroom.

The Jesus and Mary Chain is a truly peerless and ahead-of-its time group — direct influencers of Britpop, shoegaze and beyond — and their too-short 45-minute set Saturday hit us in the heart without being at all sentimental. You could feel the band's resonant tone symphonies (especially guitarist William Reid’s cloud-parting solos) in your chest from anywhere in the venue, and probably most places in Nashville.

Material off 2017’s Damage and Joy, the quintet’s first new output in two decades, held its own alongside noise-pop classics like Automatic’s “Head On” (amusingly, covered by the Pixies in this same venue just two months ago), “Just Like Honey” and “In a Hole” off the band's ’85 debut Psychocandy, and the group looked and sounded as spry as bands half its age. With its hypnotic percussion and searing guitars, their last tune, “Reverence” from 1992’s Honey’s Dead, offered a perfect segue to the NIN set just around the corner. Frontman Jim Reid and his bandmates didn’t say much on Saturday, but their message rang clear: Keep it simple — and loud.

A half-hour later, Reznor, multi-instrumentalists Atticus Ross (who became a full-fledged member two years ago), Robin Finck and Alessandro Cortini, and drummer Ilan Rubin took the stage, thrashing their way out of the gate with anthemic Broken opener “Wish.” From there, they circuitously navigated NIN’s catalog, reaching all the way back to the late ’80s.

To know Trent Reznor is to know that music is not the only part of Nine Inch Nails’ live performance. And while Saturday’s concert wasn’t the full-on sensory spectacle 2013’s Tension arena tour was, it still amazes how the 53-year-old A/V visionary can change the tenor of the show from song to song just by adjusting the lighting. For 1994’s seething “March of the Pigs,” bright-yellow lights cut to pitch black in time with the music, while the dark disco of newer tracks “The Lovers” and “Dear World” featured searchlight-like green beams. “Gave Up,” another Broken cut, came accompanied (somewhat terrifyingly) by flares of blue, white and magenta, like a fireworks show a foot away from you.

Lately, Reznor’s been parceling out new material over a series of EPs, and he played half of his latest, Bad Witch, in one go Saturday. The first of three Bad Witch selections, “Shit Mirror,” felt almost like a JAMC song, with its buzzing guitars, midtempo gait and a lot of handclaps. While it wasn’t our favorite, the pair that followed, “Ahead of Ourselves” and “God Break Down the Door,” made more sense. Setting NIN’s trademark whisper-to-a-scream dynamics to a fractured, scrappy post-punk beat — and bisected with a lengthy, sensual sax solo from Reznor himself that lasted for several minutes — the songs’ unremitting pulse and experimental flair brought to mind the frontman’s fellow Cleveland natives Pere Ubu.

The set list’s back half highlighted the band’s pair of late-’90s electronica-era one-offs: “The Perfect Drug,” which featured a jaw-dropping drum solo from Rubin, perfectly recreating the album version’s skittering breakbeats; and the evergreen David Bowie collab “I’m Afraid of Americans.” Reznor, naturally, dedicated “Americans” to the fallen Starman, calling him “a great friend and mentor and someone who meant the world to us, musically and as a person.”

Never much for banter but always one to make it count, Reznor hit on the full-circle nature of this particular tour, and spoke of the need to make art to stay connected in times of upheaval. “I think around 1991 or ’92 we had the ‘Least Likely to Succeed’ badge," he said. "Who would have ever thought? To us, this still feels very valid, makes us feel alive … keeps us centered.”

The band ended the main set with its industrial-dance classic “Head Like a Hole,” and they encored in part with a rendition of the iconic ballad “Hurt” — a song, of course, effectively claimed in 2002 by a guy some people here may have heard of — which was met with pin-drop quiet. But for the most part, the 20-song performance wasn’t hit-heavy, and that made it that much more interesting. (It gave us particular joy to know the pummeling low-end dirge of the almost Slint-like “The Day the World Went Away,” the first encore song, was being broadcast across the Cumberland to some of the same folks who complained back in May about Beck’s Ascend show being too loud.)

The emphasis on beloved but long-dormant older material spoke to the universality of Reznor’s songs, the newer stuff proved he has much more to say creatively, and the execution of all of it showed a band in top form. With their dedication to making each show a singular experience, Reznor and NIN, 30 years in, continue to reward the loyalty of a fan base willing to follow them anywhere. Concert of the year? It just might have been.

See our slideshow for more photos.

In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.